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HELP! Reinstalling windows xp ERROR
Hello, i have the dell XPS.
i attempted to reinstall windows XP OS i have done this countless number of times with my other computers but this time something is wrong.
I have a 150gb harddrive, i split it into 2 harddrives, a C drive (90 gb with OS) and a J drive (50 gb with BACKUP files)
So i use a program called Partition magic, and i reformat all of c drive.
So now i have NO OPERATING SYSTEM, and 90 gb unallocated space of HD and a j drive with misc movie files and backup files.
So i reboot my computer and NORMALLY windows would start installing, but this time i select boot from cd drive , it has a " - " flashing on the top left corner for about 1 minute then it says "Disk read error, please insert a readable diskette and reboot your computer" (not word for word but very similar)
Now i cannot access windows because my HD is reformatted and i cannot install windows.
Help!!
i attempted to reinstall windows XP OS i have done this countless number of times with my other computers but this time something is wrong.
I have a 150gb harddrive, i split it into 2 harddrives, a C drive (90 gb with OS) and a J drive (50 gb with BACKUP files)
So i use a program called Partition magic, and i reformat all of c drive.
So now i have NO OPERATING SYSTEM, and 90 gb unallocated space of HD and a j drive with misc movie files and backup files.
So i reboot my computer and NORMALLY windows would start installing, but this time i select boot from cd drive , it has a " - " flashing on the top left corner for about 1 minute then it says "Disk read error, please insert a readable diskette and reboot your computer" (not word for word but very similar)
Now i cannot access windows because my HD is reformatted and i cannot install windows.
Help!!
278
0
Posted January 4th, 2006 16:00
ultprice,
The error message asking you to insert a readable diskette indicates that the system is not finding the CD-ROM drive. Go into BIOS and check the boot order and see if somehow the CD-ROM drive has been unselected from the system. While you are there if the CD-ROM drive is shown as active, try setting it as the first boot device and booting in that manner rather than using the function key at startup to boot from the CD-ROM drive.
278
0
Posted January 4th, 2006 16:00
EDIT:
After i reboot my computer i installed the windows CD then it usually would install but this time it didnt and had error message.
Also here is my system info
DELL XPS
2 GB ram
3.6 GHZ processor
ATI RADEON 850T Graphix card.278
0
Posted January 4th, 2006 16:00
I will:
Check if the CD drive is active AND
make it #1 boot.
I will tell you what results are.
Tnx a ton278
0
Posted January 4th, 2006 18:00
Yes that is a sata drive for a desktop computer. I'm not sure what computer you have but as long as it's not a laptop that should work. It is however an oem drive which means no directions, no cables, or drivers (if needed). Although systems vary when I installed a sata drive in my computer and did a clean install of windows I had to have the sata drivers (came with my motherboard) installed during the windows installation. Some people however have not ran into that problem.
ultiprice
7 Posts
278
0
Posted January 4th, 2006 16:00
Thank you so much, that seemed to be the problem.
Please, if you would, can you help me with one other problem?
I have the dell XPS and i called Hardware department they said that it uses only SATA
hard drives, i have many other regular hard drives that wont install so i wanted to buy a new SATA hard drive, can you please tell me if the hard drive in this link is SATA and will work for XPS?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144179